In Taiwan, a group is battling fake news one conversation at a time — with a focus on seniors

Volunteers of Fake News Cleaner guide students through the LINE app to identify fake news during a class in Kaohsiung City, southern Taiwan, Thursday, March 16, 2023. An anti-misinformation group in Taiwan called Fake News Cleaner has hosted more than 500 events, connecting with college students, elementary-school children and the seniors that, some say, are the most vulnerable to such efforts. They’d head out to a church, a temple, a park and set up a stall.

“They have no way to communicate," says Melody Hsieh, who co-founded the group with Shu-huai Chang in 2018. “This entire society is being torn apart, and this is a terrible thing.” Chuang is fortunate: Her son has explained some of the things she sees on her phone — including disinformation about health on the Line app. Not everyone is as lucky, though. When it comes to misinformation, there's a lot of work to do.

At their second-ever event, Hsieh and Chang met a victim of fake news. A vegetable seller told them he'd lost sales because people had read that the vegetable fern he planted and sold, known locally as guomao, caused cancer. Business faded, and the vendor had to sell off part of his land. For a year, even restaurants didn't order from him.

It seemed unlikely: She says he opposed gay marriage and had said homophobic things. The two had often clashed on this issue before, she says, devolving into screaming matches to the point where he had thrown things on the floor. But when she decided to change his mind, Hsieh discovered a new level of patience.

When he first started doing business, decades ago, some Taiwanese suppliers did not want to sell to him because he'd come from China after the civil war between the Communists and the Nationalist party. When he proposed, his future wife’s father threatened suicide because he was not of"Taiwanese” background. Hsieh saw an opportunity in that.

Fake news relies on emotion to generate clicks. So often, headlines are sensational and appeal directly to three types of emotions: hatred, panic or surprise. A click or a page view means more money for the websites, Tseng explains. The retirees watch him, engrossed.

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